Multi-Cloud Networking… A World of Possibilities

Vice President of Partnerships and Strategy, Aviatrix
May 3, 2017

At a recent customer trial at a large beverage vendor, one of the cloud network architects who was kicking the tires of the Aviatix Hybrid Cloud Networking solution was over joyed when he could connect their AWS VPCs to their Google Project with a click of a button!

His reaction — Aa-ha.. and then Wow!

Welcome to next generation multi-cloud networking! Point, Click and Connect!

According to Gartner, global cloud consumption is expected to reach $250 billion by 2017 with 50% of enterprises deploying Hybrid Clouds.

A recent survey by Dimensional Research, showed that 77% of IT professionals are planning to deploy in multiple clouds within the next 12 months.

Fact is, most enterprises — whether by design, or by siloed cloud adoption, and/or by “shadow IT” have already adopted multiple clouds to serve multiple IT needs. Almost all our customers have a large footprint in one CSP and a smaller or growing footprint in the 2nd and 3rd CSPs.

Another fact is that while CSPs themselves are clearly aware that their end customers are leveraging or will leverage multiple CSPs, helping their customers connect to other CSPs is low in their priority list — for obvious reasons

While public cloud adoption is moving at an unprecedented pace, cloud networking architects are starting to understand and leverage each CSP’s cloud networking features and functions — connecting cloud environments across CSPs is not straight forward. It requires serious, inter cloud networking “acrobatics” using “overlay” virtual routers.

Multi-Cloud Benefits

While the number one reason for multi cloud strategy is to avoid single cloud provider lock-in, there are many other good reasons why multi-cloud leverage is becoming a common cloud practice:

Ability to leverage competitive pricing for compute and storage on demand — IAAS pricing changes almost every day.

Ability to support global expansion using the footprint of all the CSPs — Each Public cloud only covers a portion of the globe.

Best of Class IAAS Service leverage — Each Cloud Providers services may be best in class in certain areas.

Shadow IT — Each department/Group may pick their own public cloud provider.

Practical Use Cases

If Multi Cloud Networking was solved in a way that it does not require some serious networking chops and networking acrobatics, enterprises would immediately benefit from enabling some very powerful and practical use cases and needs:

Multi Cloud DR and Backup — Primary in one cloud and backup in another.

Multi Cloud Migration — Start in one cloud and migrate to another for “good” reasons.

Shadow IT Management — Central IT can now take charge of all the Shadow IT.

If the Public clouds are fast becoming the core of your IT infrastructure, networking them together should be a design requirement not a constraint.

About Aviatrix

Aviatrix provides a comprehensive software solution for all-inclusive secure connectivity between enterprise data center and public cloud regions, leading cloud providers, and direct user access to clouds. The Aviatrix one-click hybrid cloud networking solution is a software-only solution built from the ground up for Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud environments and enables enterprises to realize the benefits of agility, flexibility, and simplicity when migrating applications to the cloud.